


here is the deepest secret nobody knows

by elizajane



Series: Welcoming Silences [60]
Category: Foyle's War, The Bletchley Circle
Genre: Divorce/Separation, F/F, First Kiss, Lodgers to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-20 16:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13150671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: A series of inter-connected drabbles charting the path of Sam Stewart and Susan Gray's relationship from lodger/landlady to friends to lovers in late 1940s London. Written for Twelvetide Drabbles 2018 between 24 December 2017 and 6 January 2018.See note below for background/context as desired. Content note: pregnancy loss (recent miscarriage).





	1. hospital

**Author's Note:**

> This series of drabbles draws on a storyline I have published almost nothing of, but which happens within the [Welcoming Silences](http://archiveofourown.org/series/295280) 'verse created by Crowgirl. 
> 
> In this part of the 'verse, Sam Stewart suffers a miscarriage in the summer of 1947 and within the next year* comes to the realization that her marriage to Adam is no longer the life she wants. The postwar housing shortage means that, when she and Adam separate, she is struggling to find a place to live that will keep her in London working with Mr. Foyle. Foyle speaks with Hilda Pierce about the problem and Hilda speaks to her lover, Jean McBrien, who happens to know that Susan Gray is looking for a lodger . . .
>
>> The previous fic I have written for this couple was actually all Twitfic! Here's a recap: 1/ <https://t.co/9QilXdrySe>
>> 
>> — Evidence-Based Diversity Fetus (@feministlib) [December 26, 2017](https://twitter.com/feministlib/status/945487345058533376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> 
> *There's some time slippage here, since canonically Sam gets pregnant in late 1946 whereas events in _The Bletchley Circle_ don't begin until 1952-53. ***hand wavey fic fairy fixes timeline for now in the service of femslash*** 

“You should be downstairs with the children,” Sam tries. “It’s Christmas Eve.” It's a feeble protest that Susan ignores, pulling back the coverlet and settling the hot water bottle to Sam's abdomen.

“You're sure you don't need to go to hospital?” Susan pulls the bedclothes up, smoothing the quilt as the heat begins its work. Sam wants to reach up and rub the worry from Susan’s forehead with a gentle thumb. 

“The doctor said I needn’t,” she tries to smile. “The pain is just … worse than it used to be.” She closes her eyes. _But better now, thanks to you._


	2. candles, candlelight, flame, fire.

Susan strikes a match and touches it to the candle wick. Once the flame is steady she moves her hand to the next, lighting all eight tapers in the front parlor windows before shaking out the match just as the flame touches her fingertips.

“ _‘...can I get there by candlelight?’_ ” she murmurs, looking out into the street. “ _‘Yes, and back again.’_ ” Through the gently falling snow she sees other candlelit windows along their street, celebrating a Christmas no longer shrouded by blackout curtains.

She stands in the candlelight and waits for Samantha to find her way home through the night.


	3. tea is liquid wisdom

Sam watches from the door as Susan walks her well-bundled children to the car, leans over to speak with Timothy’s parents, then stands -- hands in her pockets, hair blowing across her face -- as the black sedan pulls away. 

Is it Sam’s imagination that, as she turns, something in Susan’s face clears when she sees Sam standing there? 

“Come inside,” she hooks an arm in Susan’s elbow as Susan comes through the door. As if, she tells herself firmly, Susan were an old school friend. “I’ve just put the kettle on. Nothing we can’t fix with tea and Mr. Valentine’s shortbread”


	4. unexpected travel

“... been called away to Colchester,” Sam is saying as her call is put through. “I’m afraid we won’t be back to London until Wednesday at the earliest. I didn’t want you to worry.” 

Susan would have worried. Is worried. She picks up a pencil and begins writing out the soothing pattern of a Fibonacci sequence on the back of an envelope. 

“Thank you for telephoning,” Susan says, trying to keep her voice calm. As if she is a landlady speaking to a lodger whom she’s only known for 79 days. 

81 days by Wednesday. 

79, 81, 160, 241, 401, 642…


	5. quiet and solitude

While Mr. Foyle speaks with the vicar, Sam tramps across the muddy snow and slips into the old parish church. It's empty on this sunlit Tuesday morning, slanted light from tall windows falling on carved oak benches and a stone floor worn by generations of faithful feet. 

She slips into a pew and sits, closing her eyes and listening to the silence. Sam isn’t sure if she believes, any longer, in the God of her childhood. But she asks, nonetheless, what God might think of her reverence for Susan’s smile.

“I think I might … be _happy_ , you see,” she whispers.


	6. the morning after the night before

“Children who aren’t sitting at the table in two minutes will miss hot flapjacks!” 

Susan wakes to the sound of her children tumbling down the stairs. She blinks, disoriented, at the sun that floods the sitting room. She wipes her mouth and sits up, wincing as her neck protests a night spent slumped in Timothy’s chair by the radiator. 

She follows voices into the kitchen and finds Sam at the stove. 

“I’m terribly sorry, I --” she begins. 

“Mr. Foyle and I got back terribly late,” Sam waves away the apology. “You’d fallen asleep or I would’ve --” she falters. “Woken you.”


	7. snowstorm

“Timothy always hated the snow,” Susan says, as she comes in stomping off her shoes and unwinding her scarf. As she brushes past Sam, standing in the kitchen doorway, Sam can’t help but notice the scent of cold air and the sweat of exertion. She closes her eyes against the sudden desire to press a kiss to the warm crease of Susan’s neck. 

Susan speaks of her husband in the past tense, though he is only abroad, not dead. Though for how long, no one seems to know. Sam allows that thought to touch her lips in a secret smile.


	8. sleeping in an unexpected location

Near eleven, Sam -- tipsy from champagne -- curls up on the sofa and pillows her head in Susan’s lap. 

“Wake me at midnight,” Sam drowsily pats Susan’s knee, then lets her hand rest warm and heavy on Susan’s thigh. 

Susan freezes. 

It had been intentional, inviting Sam to Jean’s and Hilda’s. They would be among friends -- friends who knew. There would be champagne. They would be out late. In other words, an it would be an evening of _possibilities_. 

She still finds herself unprepared.

Millie -- her arm around Lucy’s shoulders -- catches Susan’s eye and raises her glass of champagne in salute.


	9. departure

“We’ll only be gone until Sunday,” Susan says, helping Samuel into his winter coat.

Claire swings on the newel post. “We’re going to _Coventry_ ,” she tells Sam. “Have _you_ ever been to Coventry?”

“Not for many years,” Sam tells her. “Not since before the war.”

“There,” Susan says, briskly. “We must leave, or we’ll be late for the 4:05. You’ll telephone if--?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Sam says. “Go. Enjoy your holiday.”

“Until Sunday, then.” Susan leans in, pressing a kiss to the corner of Sam’s mouth. It could almost be accidental, though Sam knows it is anything but.


	10. cats are nice

"Oh!” Sam says when Paul answers the door. “I was looking for Mr. Foyle?”

“Telephone call just after six,” Paul says, ushering her into the tiny kitchen. A kettle is already on. “Told me to keep you here until he returns.”

Sam glances at the clock, thinking what it means that Paul is at Mr. Foyle’s efficiency so early in the morning.

“Who looks after Tweed when you're...in London?” she asks.

“Sharon pops in,” Paul says, setting out tea. “Cats are nice, but not quite the same as human company.”

Sam thinks of Susan’s absence. “No, they are not.”


	11. an intimidating location

“What news do you have from Timothy, my dear?” Susan’s mother asks, the china teacup settling back into place on its saucer with a chink. Susan wraps cold fingers around her own cup and looks out onto the windswept high street. 

“The foreign office keeps him very busy in Beirut,” she says. He hasn’t rung in a fortnight. She hasn’t missed the calls. 

“It seems,” her mother sniffs. “That with his promotion you could afford not to have a lodger.” 

Susan sighs. “Miss Stewart is a friend, mother,” she says. _And perhaps something more._ Though her mother needn’t know that.


	12. encouragement

Sam watches Paul move around the kitchen, opening cupboards without hesitation, a towel over the shoulder of his jumper. It’s the jumper she made him once for Christmas, during the war, she realizes. She can see the row near the bottom where she’d confused knit for purl. 

An at-home sweater. 

Sam thinks about all of the years she has known Paul, and Mr. Foyle; all the ways they encouraged her to believe in, to trust herself. Including, she realizes now, in the way they have cared for one another -- have shown her _this_ was possible. 

“Thank you,” she says quietly.


	13. act your age

_I’m being foolish_ , Susan thinks as their train pulls out of Coventry station. It’s all very well for women like Jean and Hilda, or Millie -- women who’d never married, or -- like Samantha, or Lucy -- had married but realized the mistake before motherhood. 

For Susan, though … she recalls her mother’s voice: _You’re not a child, Susan. You’ve been gallivanting with that friend of yours, Millie, long enough. Act your age and marry that child’s father before it’s too late._

“Will big Sam be waiting for us, mummy?” her son asks, sleepily, from her lap.

Maybe it's not so foolish, after all.


	14. remember who you really are

Their cab pulls up before the house and something queer twists in Susan’s chest when she sees lights already on. Sam meets them at the door. “I’ve warm milk and biscuits in the kitchen,” she says. “-- For children who wash their hands!” as the children tumble passed her into the house.

Susan sets down their cases with the knowledge she’s releasing a much heavier burden.

Sam pushes the door shut and turns. Susan feels the close warmth of her. 

“I’ve _missed_ you,” Susan says.

“Welcome home,” Sam whispers, lips against Susan’s mouth. And with great relief Susan thinks: _I am._

**Author's Note:**

> Title from e.e. cummings, "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in."


End file.
